Thinking of all the SEO facts out there, there is one that’s particularly glaring for recruitment: 75% of candidates commence their job hunt through a search engine (CareerBuilder).
Inbound marketing has become a central part of business development strategies for B2Bs, yet the recruitment industry overall has been slow on the uptake. We’ve over-relied on expensive job boards for too long plus our social media programmes have – at best – resulted in a lot of top of funnel, awareness-only activities, and have failed to nurture audiences through the sales funnel and convert them into customers.
With Indeed turning off the organic listings for recruitment and staffing firms and at the same time Google Jobs prioritising its results in the search rankings, SEO should be a key tactic in your marketing strategy.
So what is SEO? Quite simply, SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. There are a host of activities that go into this – reportedly 213 to be precise – but overall, a sound SEO strategy will allow your website to be found online, driving audiences to the site and through [conversion], turning these people into candidates and clients.
SEO should form a key part of your recruitment marketing strategy. Here are 8 SEO facts that tell you why:
- 61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority (Hubspot)
SEO is a key strategy for businesses and the recruitment industry needs to take note! Let marketing cast the wide net to pull the candidates and clients into the sales funnel, letting your sales teams focus on the high value, high touch activities – like filling jobs! An effective SEO strategy also has a long shelf life – content that you create now can actually improve over time, meaning you in months’ or even years’ time, you can still be driving traffic to your website from these activities. - 70% of internet users want to learn about your products/services through online versus more traditional advertising (MDG Advertising)
Like in consumer markets, our clients and candidates are searching online, ‘kicking the tyres’, and finding information about their recruitment process or job search long before they contact an agency for support. By understanding these personas, their pain points and what they are searching for online, you can pull people into your sales funnel and nurture them until the time they are ‘ready to buy’. For candidates, this may be long before they are actually searching for a job and with the right content and opportunity, may become ‘active’ versus ‘passive’. - 72% of marketers worldwide said that relevant content creation was the most effective SEO tactic (Marketing Profs)
In order to be found online, you must be creating content that your audiences are actually searching for. This starts with creating personas – a fictional representation of a candidate or client, including their key challenges, behaviours, background and profile, and identifying the key pain points in their customer journey. By creating relevant content, you’ll be able to attract the right audiences to your site at key stages in the buying cycle. - 70-80% of search engine users are only focusing on the organic results (MarTech)
While pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is still highly prevalent, especially in certain sectors or specialisms where competition for search engine visibility is high, audiences are still prioritising organic results in their online searches. Companies that rely solely on PPC to drive website traffic are potentially missing out on a huge segment of their audience. - 48% of 1,200 global digital marketers say on-page SEO is still considered the most effective SEO tactic (Advanced Web Ranking)
SEO is a marketing discipline in and of itself, with marketers solely dedicated to ensuring their company ranks highly in search results. Still, there are still a lot of very easy on-page SEO tactics that with some basic knowledge and instruction, anyone can master. - 36.48% of job seekers start their search with Indeed, followed by 28.33% who use Google and 12.22% who use LinkedIn. (The Recruitment Network)
Recruiters have strongly benefited from Indeed and in some cases, the majority of website traffic has come from this single source. Not surprising that the majority of job seekers start there search here. But with Indeed shutting off the organic listings for recruiters, it’s more critical than ever for SEO to play a more prominent role. Plus, it has quickly become the second most popular place for active candidates to search! - 254/500 SMEs have only a basic understanding of SEO (Higher visibility)
SEO can feel like a scary subject to some, but it really isn’t as complicated as it seems. For SMEs, it’s critical to understand your key personas – the more niche the better – as you can create content that is hyper-targeted to your key audiences. As large companies will likely be investing heavily in SEO activities, it’s important for SMEs to have an understanding of SEO if they’re going to compete for this traffic. - Updating and republishing old blog posts with new content and images can increase organic traffic by as much as 111% (Backlinko)
Good news is that you likely already have some content assets – old blog posts, case studies, testimonials, client presentations – that with some simple SEO updates, content and images can help you increase your organic traffic. While SEO may feel like a daunting task, start small and think about what you have in your arsenal today to get you started as you build your wider strategy going forward.